Recently, we expanded upon this idea with the rotisserie chickens we buy at Costco. I bought two of them and while I was putting away and organizing the other items from the shopping trip, my lovely wife cut up the birds and diced the chicken into bite-sized pieces. She then took and put all the chicken in a number of containers that we then froze.

After all the chicken was put in the freezer, she then threw the carcasses in a pot with some onions, carrots and celery and let it all simmer together. Then she strained it and put it into some containers (which I think were from soup we bought at Costco) and froze them.

As I said, this gave us five packages of high quality ready to use chicken and a couple of containers of delicious home made stock. Doing all this at once right when the chickens were bought was extremely time efficient.

The number of different meals we will get out of these two chickens is really pretty impressive from both a time and money aspect. Plus, rotisserie chickens are tasty and chicken can definitely be one of the healthier meats to eat.

And I have to say, homemade stock is wonderful stuff. In addition to having lots of real chicken flavor, it is much lower in sodium than what you typically buy at the store.

My wife and I are absolutely thrilled with this idea and I can guarantee you we will be doing it again. There are so many plusses to it that I simply can not recommend this enough.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

My wife and I enjoy cooking, but the deal on the Chicken Alfredo on sale this month was just too good to pass up, so we took the plunge. Aside from covering it with aluminum foil, there is no real prep involved other than putting it in the oven. Cooking time was about an hour, but when you figure out how long it takes to get to a restaurant, order a meal and have it come to the table, that time is really not bad.

My wonderful wife removed the foil near the end of the heating to help brown the cheese a little. The chicken is pre-cooked, so that makes the process of heating a bit quicker than baking it from scratch.

The dish had good flavor and we enjoyed it, although we both thought it was more alfredo with chicken than Chicken Alfredo. Still, there was enough meat in the dish you didn't feel cheated.

This was a good alfredo, about the quality you get at a place like Applebee's or Fridays. Even before the coupon, it is a very good value and the coupon makes it a great value.

Thus, I give it a solid thumbs up: great value and tasty food. Not the world's best alfredo, but competent and satisfying.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

A basic red sauce and meat pasta is a very reliable dish: it is tasty, easy, quick and satisfying. Another thing going for it is that it can be spruced up in a variety of ways. You can adjust the seasoning, add different vegetables and use basic dried pastas or filled ones.

In this case, my lovely wife kicked it up by adding some of the fresh spinach we buy in great big bags from Costco.

Aside from adding flavor, the spinach adds another layer of texture and it has some great nutritional aspects.

If you have been wondering what to do with some of that great big bag of spinach, try throwing some of into your pasta. You might be very pleased with the result.